


you should know i'm green, but i'll find my way around

by gdgdbaby



Category: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018)
Genre: F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-11 22:56:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16861624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gdgdbaby/pseuds/gdgdbaby
Summary: The thing is: sure, the romance novels Lara Jean reads probably aren't the most accurate depiction out there, but generally speaking, she knows how sex is supposed to go.





	you should know i'm green, but i'll find my way around

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sevenfoxes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfoxes/gifts).



> sevenfoxes, i loved all your prompts so much! there was so much to choose from; i tried to incorporate as many of your likes in this story as possible, and i hope you enjoy it. happy holidays! ♥
> 
> title from troye sivan's "seventeen." thanks to w for the quick beta.

"H up and down on P?" Emily's saying, wiggling her fingers in the air, the corner of her mouth lifting into a smirk. "T on C?"

Lara Jean's long since lost track of all the acronyms she has to look up on Urban Dictionary when she gets home. She can't even be sure they're all real. "Sorry," she says, "what are we talking about again?"

"You know what?" Gen says, disdainful. "Forget it. Clearly they haven't done anything, so—"

Something hot pushes up against the back of Lara Jean's throat even as she tilts her head, schooling her face into what she hopes is a cool, unaffected expression. "How would you know that, Gen?"

"Because I know Peter," Gen says, eyes flashing, "and I know Lara Jean."

Lara Jean tries to put it out of her mind after Gen and Emily flounce off and Peter comes back with their drinks—beer tastes way worse than kombucha, if she's being completely honest with herself—but it's hard not to let the remnants of their conversation echo in her mind. They haven't gone far because this is a fake relationship, and she asked for a "no inappropriate touching" clause in their contract. That's all. It's not her fault everyone else expects her to be well past second base just because they think she's really dating Peter Kavinsky, lacrosse captain and boyfriend extraordinaire.

Maybe that's why, when Peter leans in to take a selfie with her on the couch, Lara Jean turns her face without letting herself think twice, presses her mouth to his cheek. He smells good. Clean. Not overpowering like Toby in her precalc class, who carries a cloud of Axe with him wherever he walks, or the stale stench of sweat that permeates the hallway whenever she has to pass by the guys' locker room after gym. If it's the kind of thing that makes her want to press closer reflexively, bury her nose in the crook of his neck, well—no one else has to know.

He's smiling when she finally pulls away. "What was that for?"

She shrugs, can't help smiling back, the crinkling in Peter's face contagious. "I can't just want to take a cute selfie with my boyfriend?" she says, voice admirably level.

"Alright, Lara Jean," he says, one eyebrow crooked. "Keep your secrets."

***

> The snow was coming down in thick sheets now, blanketing the entire mountainside as far as Ilsa could see through the small cabin's windows. Benji still hadn't returned from scouting, but that was to be expected. On a good day, the next city over was at least an hour away on foot. He probably wouldn't be back until just before dawn. Hopefully that happened before they were completely buried under the snow.
> 
> "Coffee?" Walker said, two inches away from Ilsa's ear, and it took all the control she could muster not to jump.
> 
> Instead, she managed to turn in a smooth, tight circle, leaning against the windowsill. "No, but thanks," she said. She didn't trust Walker as far as she could throw him, and he was still standing much too close, but at least she had her back against the wall, and there were three easy exits in view. More, if she killed him first.
> 
> Everything about this mission made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. The longer she was trapped here without word from MI6, the less inclined she was not to just cut her losses and run. Walker was fishy. Luther and Ethan being missing was fishy. Sending Benji out alone hadn't been her first choice—she initially wanted to make the trek herself—but he'd insisted on going. So here she was, the crackling fire spitting sparks across the living room, Walker sipping on a mug of fresh coffee that smelled, admittedly, heavenly.
> 
> Presently, he set the cup down on the end table next to the window and tilted his head in toward her neck, slow, as if to give her time to push him away. And then there was this: the fact that her body seemed desperate for warmth, closeness, no matter who was providing it. She pressed the flat heel of her hand against his chest, but there was no real strength behind it. "Benji's going to be back soon," she said.
> 
> A dark expression that made Ilsa's stomach clench flickered across Walker's face. After a moment, though, it passed, replaced by his typical dirtbag smirk. He slid down onto his knees, fingers skating up the back of her thighs, and somehow managed to undo the button in her jeans with his teeth. "We'll just have to be fast, then, won't we?"

***

The thing is: sure, the romance novels Lara Jean reads probably aren't the most accurate depiction out there, but generally speaking, she knows how sex is supposed to go. They've learned about all of the clinical parts in health and the extremely awkward sex ed classes they've had to take intermittently over the years; the steamier scenes in _Hollywood Heartthrob_ and _The Night in Napa_ just add a little bit of… extra flavor to the textbook definition. They're certainly more enjoyable, anyway.

So who cares if she's never actually touched a dick before? She's not an idiot. She doesn't need first hand knowledge to know what they do or how they're supposed to work.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Peter says, brow wrinkled as he glances over at her. "I don't care that you've never touched a dick." They're at the Corner Cafe for the second time this weekend, sitting on opposite sides of a booth. Lara Jean's banging out a paper about Hamlet's Ophelia for English, and Peter's studying for a midterm coming up on Tuesday. Or—well, he was, until two minutes ago, when Lara Jean scrolled past a Facebook picture of Gen with her new boyfriend and couldn't keep her mouth shut. "Where's this coming from?"

"It's nothing," she mumbles, willing the flush out of her face. She hadn't meant to go off so hard, especially not in front of Peter, but sometimes these things just brim over without another outlet. Usually she'd spill to Margot, but she hasn't tried Skyping her since the first disastrous attempt, and she wouldn't know how to explain it to Chris without giving the entire mess away.

Peter raises an eyebrow and takes another sip of his chocolate shake. "You don't have to tell me about it if you don't want to, but it's clearly not nothing."

Lara Jean wrinkles her nose. "Gen was just being stupid at the party last week," she says, halting. "Talking about how I was clearly too innocent to have done anything serious with you." She looks up through the curtain of her hair, fingers tapping restlessly against their table. "The two of you—must have gone pretty far, huh?" She doesn't know what makes her ask it, except that part of her keeps thinking: even if he'd done everything else with Gen first, at least the first real kiss—well. Signed, sealed, delivered by yours truly in the seventh grade.

For what it's worth, Peter doesn't look particularly frazzled. He takes another thoughtful sip of his milkshake, and then says, "First of all, forget about whatever BS she brought up at the party. Like you said, she was being stupid. It doesn't matter whether you have experience or not, it doesn't make you more or less cool."

"I know," she says, annoyed with herself all over again.

"For example," he says, sweeping one magnanimous arm out toward the window, "your cool points definitely went up after we finally watched Fight Club, and that had nothing to do with sex."

"Oh, shut up," Lara Jean says, swatting at him, but she's grinning.

"Plus," he says, suddenly serious again, sitting straight up in the booth and folding his hands together. "If you really want that kind of action, Covey, you'll have to submit an addendum to our original contract."

Lara Jean snorts. "Is that the legal precedent you're learning about in AP Gov?"

"Maybe it is," he says, eyes crinkling, and shoves a stack of flashcards over the table. "If you're still taking a break from your paper, quiz me, okay?"

It's not until much later, after she gets home that night and climbs into bed freshly showered with a new book, that it occurs to her that he never actually answered her question.

***

> Four months after Ibiza, and three months after Harper finally had her new PR firm set up out of a tiny office in Brooklyn Heights, she let Leo fly her out to Berlin. He was headlining some EDM festival, playing a set at Berghain on Saturday night, and she got in late that morning, punch drunk off a combination of too much coffee and too many little bottles of white wine on the flight.
> 
> He arranged for a car to pick her up outside the airport, met her in the lobby of the swanky hotel he was staying at. "I purposely did not look up how much my round trip tickets cost you," she said without preamble, almost wheeling her suitcase into his foot.
> 
> "Oh, that's good," Leo returned, grinning at her.
> 
> "Nikki did, though, so she ruined it for me," she said, and followed him toward the elevators. She was pretty sure the floors in this place were plated with gold, Jesus Christ. "Sorry, my friends have no chill, but you already knew that."
> 
> He had come to New York to visit her in September. Not for a gig, not for anything else, but just to see her. _Payback, since you came to Ibiza to see me first_ , he'd said, and it was probably the sweetest thing a guy had ever done for her. Certainly in recent memory.
> 
> She'd spent the night at his hotel, and in the morning brought him to brunch in SoHo so that Leah and Nikki could see him up close. As they walked up to the restaurant Leah had blasted Rihanna's "Pon de Replay" on her phone so loud that the table next to theirs had complained, and Nikki had spent the entire meal interrogating Leo and honest-to-God taking notes on her phone.
> 
> "I could've flown them out here too, if they wanted," Leo said, like it didn't even matter. He tangled their hands together when they got off at the right floor, pulled her down the hall and into a suite that was, somehow, even bigger than the one he'd had in Ibiza.
> 
> "Our quota is one sleepless, drug-fueled, impromptu vacation per year, but thanks," she said as the door closed behind her, and then he backed her up against it, suitcase forgotten, and pressed their mouths together.
> 
> She couldn't lie to him and say it wasn't hard, only seeing him in person whenever the wind blew them into the same city again. Building a relationship out of meeting up once every month or two if they were lucky, filling the space in between with phone calls and FaceTimes and voicemails—sometimes it made Harper want to scream. But every time they saw each other again, every time Leo slid his hands into her hair and sucked a mark into her neck, his stubble scraping across her skin… God. Sometimes he was right there, face cradled in her hands, and Harper still missed him so much her whole body ached with it.
> 
> Most of their clothes had been dealt with by the time they made it across the room to the balcony. "Another city, another hot tub," Leo said, gesturing out the sliding glass doors.
> 
> Harper laughed. "Is that gonna become our thing?"
> 
> "Could be one of our things."
> 
> "A bit unhygienic to actually do it in the tub, no?" she said, even as they got rid of the rest of their clothes and climbed in. "You know there's jizz all over hotel rooms. Not this one, not yours, but the ones us regular old humans have to pay for."
> 
> "Fun fact," he said, smiling against her mouth, and leaned in to kiss her again.

***

It's not that Lara Jean thought the first time they made out for real would automatically lead to sex. She's not even sure, in her own head, if she's ready for that, and definitely hasn't thought about it enough to make a decision in the moment. She does know, though, that she likes it when Peter pulls her into her lap, the water in the hot tub bubbling around them, steam making everything feel hazy and dream-like. She knows that she likes feeling the shift of Peter's shoulders beneath her hands, that she likes the warm slide of his mouth against hers. Likes the soft gasp Peter makes against her mouth when she settles down, knees squeezing around Peter's hips, and feels him through his swimming trunks.

She's read about this kind of thing so many times, but it's still something else entirely to know that Peter's—he's hard, because of her. _I did this_ , she thinks, a rush of warmth shooting through her belly, throat going tight. She lets her hands trail down his chest, beneath the water, making a beeline toward the waistband of his shorts. She hadn't had the foresight to grab the condoms when she left her room, but she's pretty sure there are plenty of things they can do without them.

Peter shifts back a little, though, and grabs her wrists. "No, it's okay," he murmurs, staring through his damp bangs, smiling crookedly up at her. "Hey. We can just keep doing this."

He kisses her again before she can protest, and it's good enough that she forgets about the rest, just focuses on the slide of Peter's tongue, the huff of his breath against her mouth, the way he runs his hands through her hair. They stay in the tub for long enough that Lara Jean's fingers start to prune, everything else in her head emptying out until all that's left is a pleasant buzz. Until the only thing she can think about is everywhere they're pressed together.

She feels like she's floating on a cloud all the way back upstairs. Peter twirls her close one more time before they split off down the hall, and she gets up on her toes to press their lips together. "Good night, Lara Jean," he says, voice scratchy and thick when she pulls away. It's like something straight out of one of her romance novels, honestly. Better, even, because it's _real_.

Lucas is gone when Lara Jean lets herself into her room, lips still tingling. Chris is passed out on the other bed, still mostly dressed in her day clothes, but she rouses as Lara Jean changes into a dry nightgown. "Oy," she says, flopping over onto her back and kicking her boot the rest of the way off. "Where'd you go?"

"Peter and I made out in the hot tub," Lara Jean says, and Chris brightens.

"Hell yeah," she replies, head hanging upside down off the edge of the bed, Cheshire cat grin spread wide. "That's my girl." She waggles her eyebrows. "Anything else? Gimme all the steamy details."

Heat crawls up Lara Jean's face. "I sat in his lap, but he didn't, uh." She flops onto her own bed, stomach-first, and pillows her head in her arms. "I thought maybe he'd want me to help him out with, you know."

"His boner?" Chris offers drily. "If you can't even say it, LJ…"

Lara Jean sighs. "I know, I know. I don't know why he—ugh. Maybe he thinks I'm not serious?"

"You've been dating for months and you haven't asked him about it yet?" Chris asks, puzzled, and it takes Lara Jean a minute to remember that for all intents and purposes, they _have_ been dating for months. Lucas is still the only other person who knows it isn't— _wasn't_ real.

"I've been shy, I guess," she hedges.

Chris nods sagely. "It's not a bad idea, playing coy so he wants it more," she says, twirling a piece of her hair between her fingers. "No wonder he was so desperate to sit next to you on the bus. Good plan. You'll get him next time, babe."

"Good plan," Lara Jean echoes, doubtful. "Right."

***

> Lana turned at last and gazed at him. Noah was bigger than she was, and despite her exhaustion, he felt like a furnace lying next to her on the couch, pressed close enough that she could feel every breath he took. He reached out with one hand and touched her forearm, fingers stroking over the soft skin of her wrist before curling to tangle against hers. He had made this exact same gesture a million times before, on camera, beneath big stage lights, but here, in the tiny apartment he'd just helped her clean, it finally felt like it meant something.
> 
> When he moved closer, Lana let him crowd her into the sofa, pin her wrists back against the armrest with his loose grip. "You okay?" he said, and coughed when his voice cracked. "You're okay with this?"
> 
> Lana plucked up all the courage she had left and leaned up to kiss him, hard and hot. It was just the kind of thing she needed to take her mind off the rest of this shitty week. She relaxed as he rolled on top of her, and when he slid a hand up her shirt she doesn't protest, either, just let him fit a palm over the swell of her right breast. His skin was so warm. Her heart pounded faster, every thump against the middle joint of his ring finger. "Noah," she said, and he bit his lip and smiled at her.
> 
> "Lana," he replied, mimicking her tone. One of his legs slid in between hers, and Lana hooked her ankle around his shin. She'd thought about this idly from time to time, after they were cast to be the leads and had to do so much chemistry testing, but nothing could've prepared her for how natural it felt, the two of them slotting together as easy as anything.
> 
> There were so many things that she wanted to ask, so many things that they should probably talk about before they did this, but she didn't have the energy to even think about them right now. Instead, she let her head fall back against the armrest and reached down to flip the lower hem of her skirt up, tugged her underwear down her thighs, and guided one of his hands to where she was starting to get wet. "Shit," Noah said under his breath, "can I—"
> 
> "You can do whatever you want," she heard herself say, and the expression on Noah's face turned reverent as he slowly started to nudge the tip of one finger inside her.

***

"So, these books you're always reading," Peter says, nudging her leg with his toe. "Are they any good?"

Lara Jean looks up from her math homework to see him running a finger along the spines of the novels stacked on her bedside table. They've been hanging out at the house more this semester. Things aren't really that different now that they're genuinely dating: Peter's friends are still crazy, Chris still wolf whistles when they pass the lacrosse guys while warming up in gym class, Gen still gives her the stink eye at lunch. Peter still drives her and Kitty to school and buys Yakult when he comes over for movie nights. She probably should've figured it out sooner.

It's nice, though, now that they're finally here, to not have to wonder about where they stand. Nice that the anxiety of inappropriate feelings doesn't cloud every one of their interactions. It's nice that they can sit together in companionable silence in her room and Lara Jean doesn't have to be self conscious about whether or not she's being too obvious. She's allowed to ask for the things she wants.

"I like them," Lara Jean says at last, reaching across to pull one of the books off the top of the stack. "Chris calls them bodice rippers, and like, yeah, sometimes there's sex in them, but that's not the whole point. Or, well, the sex means something, you know?" She coughs into her palm. "The feelings are important too."

A thoughtful expression passes over Peter's face. "That makes sense. You don't want your first times to be fake."

Lara Jean bites her lip. _Just ask, Lara Jean_ , she thinks, straightening up against the headboard. "Do you ever think about it?"

Peter looks up at her. "Bodice rippers?"

"No," she says, laughing. "Sex." She pushes her homework aside and turns toward him, knees brushing against his shoulder. "I know I'm not Gen, but you don't have to, like, feel like you have to protect my innocence, or that you're—if you want to."

To his credit, Peter doesn't try to deflect. "That's not why," he says, sliding a hand through his hair and pushing up onto his elbows. His fingers tug at the string of his hoodie, and Lara Jean likes that she knows him well enough to tell that that's a nervous tic. "I do think about it, but I've—" He makes a face. "I haven't actually ever done that stuff with anyone."

Lara Jean blinks. "Wait. What? But Gen always made it seem like—"

Peter shakes his head. "Gen never really cared about doing it so much as she cared about wanting other people to think that she'd done it," he says, which makes sense, in a sad way. "I guess I felt like that too, and we got really good at faking it. I spent a lot of time wondering if it's why she decided to dump me and go date that college guy, and then I realized it didn't actually matter." He smiles, reaches out to run a hand up Lara Jean's shin. "You're braver than I am, and you're braver than she is. You don't care what other people think, and that's the coolest thing about you. One of them, anyway."

Lara Jean huffs. "I don't think I'm that brave." She shrugs, and then, before she can second guess herself, swings one leg over Peter and settles in his lap. The corner of her mouth rises when he sucks in a quick breath, hands cupping her hips. "I'm afraid of a lot of things. I just want something more than I'm afraid, now." When she leans forward, the long sweep of her hair falls between them, and it's like the rest of the world has dropped away. "Do you?"

Peter exhales, long and slow. "Yeah, Lara Jean," he says, eyes clear, voice soft. "I do."

Lara Jean reaches up to run a finger along the scar on Peter's chin, and then pushes closer with her mouth, slides her tongue against the seam of Peter's lips until he lets her in. There's something thrilling about doing this in the house; Kitty's sleeping over at a friend's place tonight, and Dad isn't home yet, working a later shift at the hospital, but it still feels illicit, a sense of urgency coloring the mood, making her breath come faster.

They kiss for long enough that Lara Jean's mouth feels hot and bruised. Her heart's pounding doubletime in her chest. This time, when she reaches down toward Peter's basketball shorts, he lets her feel out the shape of his dick, sighs as she rubs him a little through the fabric.

"Um," she mumbles. "How does that feel? I don't really—maybe we should've watched something—"

"No, this is—really good." He props himself up again as Lara Jean slips her fingers past the hem of his shorts, the waistband of his underwear, and fits her hand around him. The skin feels soft, almost silky, and she thinks she can feel him get harder as she drags her palm up, down, and again. "It's, um—" He looks up at the ceiling, holding himself so still that the tension in his thighs lifts her a little higher. "It feels better if you lick your palm. At least when I, you know, jerk off, that's—"

"Oh," Lara Jean says, flustered, ears hot. "Okay." Before she can overthink it, she tucks him out over the waistband and then lifts her hand to her mouth, tongue swiping quickly across her skin. Her fingers looks small when she wraps them around his dick again in the open air, and she pauses for a moment just to take the image in: Peter half-lidded and pink, mouth parted, chest rising and falling just a shade too quickly, the hard length of his erection nestled in the tangle of hair at the juncture of his legs. First times only happen once. She wants to remember this.

"We can stop," Peter says after a moment, hips twitching. "If it's too—"

"No, no," Lara Jean says, and slides her hand up again, smoother this time with the help of her spit. Her palm is so hot, and the rest of her body feels overheated too, like the thermostat in the house has been dialed all the way up. Peter lets his head sag back a little, groaning. Lara Jean wants to get her mouth on his throat, so she gives into the impulse and does, is rewarded with another wounded noise dragged out of Peter's throat. He smells as good as he always does, like shampoo and laundry detergent and now, faintly, just a hint of sweat. "I was just," she continues, hushed. "I just wanted to get a good mental picture."

"Are you gonna think about this a lot?" Peter says breathlessly, and then, as she tightens the circle of her fingers even more, mutters, "Ah, LJ, I'm gonna— _fuck_ —"

Something hot and sticky spurts out over Lara Jean's knuckles. _Oh_ , she thinks, dizzy, _he came_.

Peter flops back against her pillows and reaches up to cover his face with his hands. "God," he mumbles, red from arousal and maybe embarrassment, squirming until she lets him go. "Sorry, I didn't mean to—I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she says automatically, balancing on her knees to reach over for the box of tissues on her cabinet. He looks at her through his fingers as she carefully wipes her hand off and dumps the dirty tissue in the trash can. Before she can sit back on her haunches, though, Peter flips them over, Lara Jean bouncing against the mattress as she lands on her back.

"Hey," he says, face close, one firm thigh sliding between hers, and all that heat in the rest of her body starts to pool in her stomach. She's felt similar ways from time to time, especially after reading something particularly filthy in one of her books, but it's never been like this. It's never coalesced so fiercely, aching in the apex between her legs. She gasps when Peter presses closer, squirms up toward him, trying to chase the feeling.

Peter rolls his hips down, and she says, "Do that again," high and sharp, hooking a leg around the back of his waist to pull him in and keep him there.

He hitches her thigh higher, one hand creeping up past the hem of her dress. "Can I?" he asks, fingers pressing along the damp crotch of her underwear, and she nods, suddenly frantic, the sheer force of her desire taking her by surprise.

Peter's just slipped a finger up against her when she hears the door to the garage clang open and shut. "Lara Jean, I'm home," comes Dad's voice from downstairs. "I also picked up enough Shake Shack to feed a small army, so you better be staying for dinner, Peter."

"Be right down," Lara Jean manages to call, shifting back against the pillows. "Thanks, Dad!"

"Should we—" Peter's frozen, which is the last thing she wants right now.

She shakes her head, one arm looping around his neck to tug him close again. "No, I'm—I'm close. Just keep going." She reaches down to circle her fingers around Peter's wrist, and his big hand cups her firmly enough that she has to swallow around a throaty moan. "Yes, that's it—that's—"

She doesn't quite know it's going to happen until it does, her whole body going rigid against the weight bearing down on her, Peter's fingers and his leg and the press of his torso. It makes her legs lock and her toes curl into the sheets and her breath catch in her throat, and for a moment, the entire world narrows down to just her and Peter, the quivering pleasure in her belly and Peter's steady hands.

And then she's back, shaking a little beneath him, exhaling in a long burst of air.

"Did you—was that—"

"I think so," Lara Jean says, the words slurring together. Peter gently untangles his hand from her underwear and sags onto his side. His fingers are glistening when he lifts them up, and he brings one to his mouth before she can stop him, tongue flicking pink and wet across his knuckle. Lara Jean makes a small noise in the back of her throat, stomach flipping. "Oh my God, don't—"

He pulls his finger out and grins. "Tangy," he says, and Lara Jean wants to bury her face in his chest and never have to look him in the eye again, but she also wants him to slide his hand back down and do the same thing all over. "So, um," he continues, eyes wide. "Was that okay?"

"Yeah," she says, and it feels good to tell the truth. "I can't believe we—with my dad right down there—" And then they're both giggling, the aftershocks reverberating between them. It would be a lie to say she doesn't feel a little different, on the other side of things, but she likes it. She likes _Peter_ , and Peter likes her, and they're here, together. For now, that's more than enough.

"Yeah," he repeats, shaking his head. "You're something else, Lara Jean." He yanks a pillow from beneath her head and taps it against her stomach, smiling that scrunchy-nosed smile, the one that's her favorite. "Let's go eat dinner."


End file.
